'You're at war': I went inside the new TSA Academy, where officers learn to detect bombs, spot weapons, and find out why failure isn't an option

A woman in navy cargo pants approaches the walk-through metal detector ahead of me. As she tries to covertly slip a switchblade knife into one of her many pants pockets, she fumbles, and the knife drops to the floor. Only I and one other person see this, and after picking up the knife, she grins at us and places a finger to her lips.

"Shh," she whispers, before successfully slipping the knife into her pocket.

I say nothing and watch anxiously as she approaches the metal detector, hopeful that the officer manning the machine catches her. Alarms sound and the resulting pat down reveals that her pockets are full of knives.

If we were in a major American airport, this officer would have just saved the day. This scene didn't play out in an airport, however, and I wasn't complicit in any crime. I was observing the mock checkpoint training that all new transportation-security officers, or TSOs, must complete at the TSA Academy, which was created this year.

The mock checkpoint training is just one piece of the US Transportation Security Administration's newest strategy to help TSOs complete their mission.

A student prepares to check a bag at a mock security-checkpoint position at the TSA Academy in Glynco, Georgia.
Justin Gmoser/Business Insier

Protecting America's skies

What is TSA's mission? Academy students should know — they recite it every morning before classes begin: "To protect the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce."

Last summer, TSA was failing this mission.

During a number of covert audits on passenger and baggage-screening operations, airport TSA screeners failed to detect banned weapons in 67 of 70 tests at dozens of airport checkpoints around the country. John Roth, inspector general of the US Department of Homeland Security, described these findings as "troubling and disappointing" and called for a major overhaul of how TSA operates.

The DHS responded by bringing in Peter Neffenger as the new TSA administrator, and he soon set about improving the training for TSA's frontline officers, among other things.

In January 2016, the TSA began sending its newly hired officers from airports around the country to a consolidated basic training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, where students collectively learn about TSA's mission and operations as a counterterrorism organization.

"Training is the foundation of mission success and a powerful tool in galvanizing and leading change," Neffenger said during a speech at the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan forum and think tank in Washington, DC, in July. "It provides consistency, develops a common culture, instills core values, improves morale, and it raises performance."

And it couldn't have come at a better time for the agency.

TSA ramped up its hiring efforts this year in response to reports of long lines wrapping around the nation's busiest airports, wait times of sometimes more than an hour, and hundreds of stranded passengers. Now the 5,400 new hires who are expected to have completed their training between January and September 2016 get the same standard of training.

The program, which costs the federal government $2,400 a student when factoring in travel and lodging, lasts nine days. Students hired to work in various airports across the country live together on the center's campus in dormitories and must abide by certain rules, like quiet hours after 10 p.m.

Eight classes begin each start week, and each class has 24 students and three instructors. To graduate, students must receive passing grades on an image-interpretation test and a job-knowledge test. After graduation, they may begin new hire on-the-job training at their home airports. TSA estimates that about 4,500 TSOs have gone through the academy so far.

"We're actually noticing that in airports that have had many people come to our training, the culture changes," says Jason Pockett, an instructor who moved from Orange County, California, last year to join the TSA Academy team in Georgia. "It's getting a more positive spin out there. People are starting to follow the procedures and do the things that they're being trained to do here on a more consistent basis."

2/

A student at the TSA Academy gets hands-on experience by role-playing a pat down at the mock TSA checkpoint.
Justin Gmoser/Business Insider

Before the TSA Academy, TSO training was delivered locally at airports.

"The training was a little bit different because, yes, we had classrooms and we had our computers, but we never had a place where we could truly practice and truly get the hands-on experience," Pockett says.

"It was more, 'Here's the lesson, let's just talk about it for a while, maybe pat down each other or do a bag check real quick in the classroom,' and then it was, 'Go out to the floor, work with the lab passengers, and just try to figure it out while you're out there,'" he says.

With the newly consolidated training, Pockett says that students can hit the ground running with a much deeper understanding of the job.

"The reason we consolidated training was to get the one message across," he says. "We can ensure that everybody's pretty much in the same place, they get their one strong message, understand truly what the mission of TSA is, and ensure that everybody's getting one set of standard operating procedures, and that way we can keep that continuity once they get to the airports and have everybody screening the exact same way."

And that means they're catching more threats. Last year, the TSA found 2,653 firearms. By midway through this year, the TSA had already found 1,827 firearms.

3/

Bill Morgan, an explosives specialist with the TSA and an academy instructor, shows almost 200 academy students different components of improvised explosive devises (IEDs) before a specialist sets off explosions to demonstrate their power.
Justin Gmoser/Business Insider

The 'main threat'

Leaving one class about improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, after less than an hour, I feel like I've learned more about bombs than I'd ever cared to know.

The TSA considers IEDs the "main threat" and one of the most important things that officers have to find when screening passengers and baggage. IEDs are particularly scary because they're so hard to find — they could be made from some of the most common items, even toilet paper.

"An IED is limited only by the imagination of the bomber and the materials readily at hand," Bill Morgan, an explosives specialist and TSA Academy instructor, tells the class.

And thanks to the internet, which is full of "how to" articles about bomb-making, terrorists don't even need to have an imagination anymore.

"Not only are IEDs constantly evolving, but the enemy is constantly looking to attack us," he adds.

When you put it like that, it must be overwhelming for TSOs to think about just how important and challenging their job is. Loading these trainees' brains full of information about recognizing explosives and initiators may seem like a lot to handle, but Morgan says that preparation is crucial in making TSOs comfortable about doing their jobs. His goal is to go over the material until they're "sick of ever hearing about it."

"If an IED can look like anything and be made out of anything, how can we find it?" he asks the class. "By knowing which components we need to look for."

"Because no matter how wild they get, how imaginative, how inventive they get, it's got to have certain components. And that's what we're going to talk about today," he says.

We learn about nitroglycerin, which people with heart conditions can take to widen their blood vessels and treat symptoms like chest pain. It's also the first modern high explosive, which was discovered by Alfred Nobel. And it was used in the Bojinka plot, a failed plan in 1995 to blow up 11 airliners, potentially killing thousands of passengers and shutting down air travel around the world.

Terrorists planned to put nitroglycerin in its liquid form in contact-lens-solution containers, carry them on board, leave them under seats, and get off the planes before detonation.

4/

In the classroom, TSA students learn the various components of IEDs they may detect on the job and what happens if they fail to do so.
Justin Gmoser/Business Insider

Learning the historical context is crucial to driving it all home. Morgan asks his students why the Bojinka plot is so important.

"Because, when they went into that apartment, they basically found the genesis of 9/11 ... They outlined the basis of the plot, and the plot since then has been attacks on multiple airliners," he says.

Morgan says that this tells us a lot about who the US is fighting.

"They've been at war with us since the '90s. They're going to be at war with us for the next 50 years. And do you know why I tell you that? Because you're at war. Did you know that? You're at war. You guys are frontline troops. Because they will continue to attack aviation because it works. Everybody forgets that. We've been at war with them since the 1990s," he says.

And Morgan should know. He's a retired US Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician who worked on military-bomb disposal — think Jeremy Renner's character in "The Hurt Locker." He did a tour in Iraq, and he's been teaching people how to thwart terrorist attacks since 2001.

"I've been there, and I've done that. I've had people try to kill me with an explosive device," he says.

It's that added layer of expertise and support from specialists like Morgan that helps new TSOs stay confident in the field.

5/

An academy student sets off a detonation that sends a tire some hundred feet into the air.
Justin Gmoser/Business Insider

Reading smoke

It's IED-demonstration day, one of the main events toward the end of training, and about 200 chattering students are tightly packed on a line of bleachers underneath a thin, metal roof that barely separates us from the blazing Georgia sun.

In front of the students is a table set up with powders, wires, and tubes on it — and in the distance is a vast, green field with various numbers hanging from posts in the grass. We've all been handed a set of bright orange earplugs and instructed to put them in.

Morgan begins with a warning: "Treat all explosives with respect. You never know when something's going to go wrong. With explosives or chemicals, things always go wrong. So don't do anything like this."

He throws a brown tube to a nearby instructor, and when he catches it — boom! An explosion in the field goes off, people scream, there's nervous laughter and chatter — and I instinctively duck and cover. Things just got real.

This is the part of the training where TSOs get to see firsthand what happens if they fail their mission. For the next 50 minutes or so, Morgan walks students through the various IED components discussed in class and, after a countdown, an explosives expert in a nearby tower sets off explosions with the same components in the field.

One explosion sends a tire maybe a hundred feet into the air. Another, though likely a few hundred feet away, sends a shock wave so far-reaching that you can feel a gust of warmth in the bleachers.

TSOs see firsthand that each kind of explosion has its own pattern, and knowing this can come in handy in an emergency situation.

"Take a look at the color of the smoke. Note the color of the smoke," Morgan reminds trainees. "So let's look at position four, ammonium-nitrate emulsion, in three, two, one."

Boom! A loud explosion sets off nearby car alarms, and puffy white smoke billows from where the emulsion explosive just detonated. Morgan notes that the light-colored smoke indicates that there are a lot of oxidizers in the explosive, and it also indicates that it's a commercial, not a military, product.

"If you're walking to work, you're getting off the bus and walking to the terminal, and a car blows up over here, you see the white smoke, what do you want to remember? White smoke," he says.

Investigators can use this information to discern more about the detonation.

At the end of the day, the main takeaway is abundantly clear: A TSO's job is a matter of life and death.

"We're protecting people's lives, so we want students to get an appreciation for why we're doing this," Morgan says before the demonstration. "We're trying to impress upon them the seriousness of what they do. This kind of brings it home and makes it a little more real."

6/

TSA Academy students practice scanning the X-ray machine for weapons and explosives at the mock checkpoint.
Justin Gmoser/Business Insider

How to win '100% of the time'

An airport-security checkpoint is a fast-paced, high-stress environment, and on a daily basis TSOs need to stay focused amid multiple distractions, from irate, impatient, or clueless passengers to the loud noises from certain checkpoint machines.

To keep everything in order, TSOs work off of a kind of script. At TSA Academy, they learn the protocols and procedures for customer service and keeping everyone safe.

The academy's fully functional mock-checkpoint training has everything from walk-through metal detectors and body scanners to X-ray machines and even the queue signage that you'd see at an airport. It's the students' final chance to make sure that they've got the procedure down pat and that they can respond to any scenario as efficiently as possible.

To ensure this, students take turns acting out various scenarios written on white cue cards, from an angry passenger in a rush to an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Since TSOs rotate positions every 20 to 30 minutes in real life, trainees also rotate from one position to another in training.

To make the role-playing process more realistic, the TSA Academy also provides props like prohibited and nonprohibited items and different kinds of luggage for students to use. Instructors keenly observe and step in to advise when necessary.

"Students can practice and get their hands on the machines they're going to be using at the airport," Pockett says. "Training gives them the ability to reenact scenarios to help them understand that this may happen to you at the airport — this is something that you need to be aware of. That way, they get it in a semi-live environment for the first time. If they mess up, we can train them again and we can work on it and get it better."

In the classroom, TSOs learn the importance of professionalism, and all TSOs receive regular ethics training. At the academy, classroom walls are lined with posters about effective communication and good listening and people skills. Now they have a firsthand opportunity to practice those skills.

One trainee hunches over a metal cane as she walks through the metal detector.

The machine sounds with high-pitched, quickly repeating beeps, indicating to TSOs that she has metal on her person, a common scenario. Other beeps of a different tone indicate to TSOs that it's time to conduct a random search.

Since passengers can't go through metal detectors with metal canes, the trainee is given a wooden cane while her metal one goes through the X-ray machine. The TSO trainee manning the walk-through metal detector explains to her calmly and courteously the physical checks that will be performed.

He talks to me after checkpoint training about what he's learned over the past two weeks.

"Always say thank you. Never assume someone's age. Never make physical contact with a person until you've already cleared it with them that this is what I'm going to do, and do you have any sensitive areas, any sore areas, do you have a broken leg or anything like that? And always put yourself in their situation. They've got a place they want to be and they want to get through there fast. Be effective, be fast, be courteous," he said.

7/

Students at the TSA Academy learn that when a potential threat is detected, their primary role is to resolve the alarm.
Justin Gmoser/Business Insider

The trainee resolving the metal-detector alarm offers the woman with the cane assistance to walk to the next position, but a watchful instructor stops him. You cannot leave your post, not for a second. It takes only a second, he says. Whatever you do, you have to remain within two feet of your position.

The trainee realizes his error and offers that he should have instead called for assistance from a "dynamic" officer, someone who can move from one checkpoint position to another to assist where needed.

He's just learned a valuable lesson: Customer service and courtesy are important, but safety comes first.

"I understand why it takes a little bit longer," Gilbreath tells me. "After training, I'd rather take a little bit longer and be safe than to rush through the process and have something go wrong or have something slip through."

Throughout the TSA Academy, TSOs learn that they are the TSA's first line of defense.

When TSOs detect an IED, their job is to inform a supervisor. If the IED is verified, then local and national law enforcement and the bomb squad come in, evacuate the airport, and eliminate the threat.

If TSOs succeed in detecting a threat, then, "we win, 100% of the time," Morgan says.

If not, then we find out the hard way when a bomb goes off on an airplane.

"Once the bomb gets on board, that's the end of it, right? So realistically we have to stop the threat at the checkpoint," he tells students.

"I'm going to tell you, you have the most critical job in TSA. No doubt about it. So always remember that," Morgan says.